The photos of ME356's fuel are fascinating. I don't know what to make of the fractal growth on the carbon sticky tape. I would love to see an EDS of the fractal growth. Ni crystals do tend to grow when there is sufficient heat and in the absence of oxygen, but the Ni crystals are normally spiky spears (as is seen in some of the photos). I can't believe that the fractal growth is metallic hydrogen - just too far fetched Axil.
I can speculate about what ME356 does to prepare his fuel. Here are a few thoughts: - The fuel is Ni or Ni alloy wire wound into a coil shape that will fit into a reactor tube. - From what we have seen, it doesn't seem like ME356's reactor runs a current through this coil - it is possible, but it is risks short term burnout limiting the life of the reactor. My guess is that it is just a coiled up wire fuel inside of a fused silica or ceramic tube that contains the fuel coil and H2 gas. - ME356 talks of pre-treating his fuel. He says that the longer he pre-treats the fuel the more active it is in producing LENR. I think the pre-treatment consists of putting the Ni coil inside a vacuum chamber, that has been evacuated to less than 1 micron. The wire is heated and cooled until it stops outgassing. Then the chamber is filled with about 10 torr of H2, the wire is heated, and the wire or an adjacent Ni electrode is driven with RF at one of the ISM band frequencies. This will provide some sputter-like activation of the surface. - After the hot sputter processing, take the coil out and put it into the reactor tube and heat in H2 for LENR.
